


Triangulation

by omniocularz (adaptation)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Character Death, Character Study, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Extramarital Affairs, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mystery, Narcissism, Parent Death, Post-Canon, Richie Tozier levels of impropriety, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Stan's fine too, Wakes & Funerals, the bureaucracy of death, the road to self-discovery is paved with parental lies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:27:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adaptation/pseuds/omniocularz
Summary: It's pitch dark, after eleven, and the light from the streetlamp by the sidewalk doesn't give him much to work with from this distance, but he doesn't need the light to be able to tell—it's the same. It's like he never left. Sonia hadn't moved a single cushion since the day he'd walked out. Even her recliner faces the television at the exact same angle.Eddie wonders idly if that's where they'd found her body. If that chair was the place where she'd died.He hadn't thought to ask.---Or: Sonia's death raises more questions than Eddie's prepared to answer, but Richie will help him play detective.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Myra Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 35
Kudos: 70





	Triangulation

**Author's Note:**

> Please keep an eye on the tags for this fic. I'll be adding new tags with each chapter.
> 
> Also, since I'm dropping y'all in the middle of this, you should know that everything is the same as canon except that Sonia was alive at the time of Chapter 2 (and that Eddie and Stan are alive, because fuck Stevie King).

Bits of loose gravel crunch under the tires of his rental car as it pulls to a stop in the driveway of Eddie's childhood home. He puts the car in park, kills the engine, and peers through the windshield up at the front window, streaked from melted snowflakes and glinting in the headlights that haven't shut off yet. He remembers peering through that window and watching the Losers peddle away on their bikes when his mom had refused to let him go out. It had been after he'd broken his arm, but before Bev was taken. Before he'd known about the placebos.

 _Gazebos._ The thought hits him suddenly, and he gives a mirthless snort into the silence of his rental car.

Reluctantly, he climbs out of the car and locks it. He retrieves his luggage from the trunk, his breath visible in the cold February air. He hasn't been to Derry in the winter in twenty-odd years. He can't say he's missed it. At least It always had the courtesy to strike during the summer. It made sense, kids running wild in the freedom of the heat, easy pickings. But Eddie can't imagine he'd have enjoyed wading through waist-deep greywater any better in the frigid winter cold.

When he finally unlocks the door to his childhood home and swings it open, he can't make himself cross the threshold. It's been six months since he's seen the house, drove past it on his way into Derry last August, but it’s been a hell of a lot longer since he's been inside. The warm, stale air inside hits him, carrying the scent of baby powder, acetone, and his mother's cloying perfume. It mixes in a way that makes the healed-over hole in his chest ache, and his fingers twitch for the inhaler he doesn't carry and never needed.

He's not sure how long he stands there, but it's long enough for his fingers to go numb around the handle of his luggage. Then he sighs, screws up whatever modicum of courage he has, and steps into Sonia Kaspbrak's house.

It's pitch dark, after eleven, and the light from the streetlamp by the sidewalk doesn't give him much to work with from this distance, but he doesn't need the light to be able to tell—it's the same. It's like he never left. Sonia hadn't moved a single cushion since the day he'd walked out. Even her recliner faces the television at the exact same angle.

Eddie wonders idly if that's where they'd found her body. If that chair was the place where she'd died.

He hadn't thought to ask.

He bypasses the living room entirely, drags his suitcase through the kitchen and up the stairs to his old bedroom. He notes the closed door to the master bedroom, but moves past it without stopping until he's over the threshold to the only room in this godforsaken house he ever felt remotely safe. He closes the door behind him, strips off his coat and shoes— _he's still wearing his coat and shoes, his mother would have shit herself—_ and collapses onto his childhood bed.

The sheets are different. New, maybe, but they could be ten years old and he'd never know the difference. They smell of laundry detergent, the same kind she used to use when he lived here, the kind he refused to buy on principle once he'd moved out. Despite the fact that no one's slept in this bed in two decades, the room's not dusty. She's kept it clean, awaiting his arrival. Like she always knew he'd come back, even if it was only to put her in the ground.

He rolls over to face the wall like he used to when the moon was full and too bright outside his window. Laying here, in this bed, in this house, in this position, he feels fifteen again. The intervening twenty-five years melt away like protective varnish stripped off a delicate painting. It makes him feel exposed and uncomfortable, and he needs to unsubscribe from Baumgartner Restoration if he's going to start spouting poetic shit about art in his dead mother's musty house.

Idiotic.

He should get changed and wash his face, stumble through his nighttime routine. Then he can sleep and, tomorrow, he can get this show on the road.

He doesn't. Instead, he falls asleep curled on his side, clutching one pillow to his chest like it's another person. Tomorrow, he has to plan a funeral.

* * *

He wakes up early, just before six, with a sharp pain in his bladder and a mouth that tastes like something died in it. Eddie blinks blearily and rolls onto his back, and for several long, disorienting moments, he forgets how old he is. This stretch of popcorn ceiling was his wake-up view every day for eighteen years, save holidays and sleepovers. Seeing it again in the grey, pre-dawn light, he's struck with the thought that his whole adult life was a hallucination, a very vivid dream, and now he has to live every miserable moment all over again. But he brings up one hand to scrub it down over his face and feels the scar on his cheek, scratchy whiskers that need shaving...and the cool metal of his wedding band against his jaw.

With a low huff, he swings his feet out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom down the hall. He uses the toilet. He washes his hands and splashes some water on his face, then brushes his teeth with the brush he retrieves from his toiletry bag. He slept in his travel clothes and he feels gross, but it's too early and he's still too wiped out to want to shower. Instead he strips down to his underwear and falls back in bed, this time under the covers.

He reaches over to the nightstand to grab his phone. It sits in the place he always used to keep his inhaler, back when he thought he needed one, and then for a while after that, when it was a convenient bargaining chip for getting his mom to do what he wanted. Now his phone is the tool, but Sonia isn't the one getting manipulated. _He_ is.

His lock screen informs him that he has six unread messages and three missed calls. Immediately, he wants to put the phone back down, to roll over and ignore it until he falls back asleep, but he swipes in his passcode and his text chain with Myra fills the screen. The missed calls and five of the new messages are from her:

11:24pm: Did you get there safely?  
_Missed call_  
11:49pm: You said you'd call when you got to your mother's.  
_Missed call_  
_Missed call_  
12:10am: I'm not going to wait up for you, but it's very inconsiderate of you not to let me know you got there. You could have been in an accident, and you know how I worry, especially after last summer.  
12:43am: You're really not going to call?  
12:56am: fine.

Then, one conversation down in his Messages app, a new message from Richie: _did u no owls can sit crisscross applesauce????_ There's a crying emoji and an accompanying picture, which is, admittedly, adorable.

He clicks into the Losers Club group chat to find that Richie has posted the same picture there, and Stanley has had a complete breakdown over it. There's also some well wishes from Mike ( _Hope you made it to Derry OK, Eddie! Let us know if you need anything!_ ) and a chorus of agreement from the others. Eddie replies with the thumbs up sticker thing that Facebook forces on everyone, and then lays his phone back on the nightstand.

Myra had not been thrilled about it, when he'd told her he had to go back to Derry. He didn't know what he'd done to give her the mistaken impression that he _liked_ visiting his hometown, but at least that aspect of her irritation had been quashed when he'd explained the reasoning. This wasn't a visit for pleasure.

The call had come through his office line. His assistant, Jake, had buzzed in, and said with barely contained intrigue, "Mr. Kaspbrak, there's a policeman on the line for you." For a second, he'd thought maybe it was about Richie and Bowers, but that case had been dismissed as self-defence months ago. But the officer on the phone wasn't calling about Bowers. He was calling because Sonia Kaspbrak's body had been found in her home that morning. A chat with the neighbour had revealed her next of kin to be Edward Kaspbrak, who lived in New York and worked in insurance. A cursory Google search had turned up his LinkedIn page, and from there they'd found his place of work. Eddie Kaspbrak wasn't nearly as hard to find as he'd like to think.

He'd asked all of that before he got around to asking how she died.

The coroner suspected complications from Alzheimer's, but they couldn't be certain without an autopsy. He was welcome to discuss options with the funeral home when he arrived in town, but they needed him to claim the body, and presumably arrange a service. He was her only family.

He hadn't known she'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but there was no reason he would have. He hadn't taken her calls since he was 23 years old. Myra had been upset about the cause of death, with the suspected heritability of Alzheimer's, and hadn't appreciated him pointing out that being aware of Sonia's diagnosis wouldn't affect whether or not Eddie had the gene for it. She'd appreciated it even less when he reminded her just how much she'd pushed him to go no-contact with his mother in the first place.

He'd still ordered a 23andMe test before he'd left for Derry, though, so it's not like he's any better.

He dozes for another hour, and then forces himself to reply to Myra's texts when he wakes up. He apologises, blames exhaustion for not calling her, and promises to keep her posted about the funeral plans. He managed to keep her from coming with him to help pack up the house, but she's insisted on coming up from New York for the service. What kind of person doesn't go to their mother-in-law's funeral? What would people think?

His stomach is growling when he gets out of the shower, but even the fleeting thought of eating Sonia's leftovers makes him queasy, so he heads out to the diner for an omelet. Bill and Richie worked there one summer, he remembers, and the menu inserts haven't changed since then. He takes a picture and sends it to the group chat. Mike sends back a picture of artistically-plated eggs Benedict with the backdrop of a Floridian sunrise, and Eddie doesn't know why he fucking bothers. He replies with the middle finger emoji.

As he eats, he uses his left hand to open up a note app on his phone and make himself a To Do list.

\- order a dumpster  
\- go to the funeral home  
\- get boxes (grocery store?)  
\- contact real estate agent  
\- contact accountant (Stan?)  
\- set up obituary

He can't think of anything else to add at the moment. He stares at the list for a while, and then closes it and pulls up Minesweeper instead.

He gets through one game of medium difficulty before he finishes his omelet, and then pays, tips 17.5% exactly, and makes his way back out to his rental car. The air is bitingly cold, but it's not snowing; the sun is bright enough to make his eyes ache. Clown nonsense aside, he misses the darkness and heat of Maine in August. Now that he can remember what Maine is like year-round, his impressions of summer are more than just stifling oppression in his mom's house. Summer means escape. He can remember the breeze tousling his hair, the dull buzz of katydids in the long brown grass of the Barrens, the sting of nettle against his bare feet. In February, the sun sets too early to spend much time outside after school. Winter is cold and lonely.

He closes himself in the car and starts it up, thinks of his To Do list on his phone. It's early, but not so early that the places he needs to go would be closed. He should hit the funeral home first, probably, maybe contact the newspaper about the obituary. The funeral home might offer to handle that, though.

He goes grocery shopping instead.

Eddie doesn't know what Sonia has in her fridge or her cupboards, but he knows he wants none of it. It'll all go into the dumpster with most of her belongings. He buys enough food to get him through the week, and two boxes of industrial-strength garbage bags. On a whim, he adds two bottles of mid-priced red wine and a bottle of Plymouth. He doesn't usually drink it straight, but he forgoes the tonic anyway. If the cashier has any thoughts about his purchase, she keeps them to herself.

When he gets back to Sonia's house, there's an unfamiliar pickup truck in the driveway tucked up behind Sonia's 2005 Focus. He eyes it warily, but opts not to block it in, parking on the street instead. Then he stubbornly grabs all his grocery bags, even though the bag with the booze in it was enough to make his wrist hurt on its own.

There's no one in the truck. Nothing hanging from the mirror or spread across the front seats, he notes as he climbs the stairs onto the porch. It's too clean, like the sedan he rented. Maybe someone just needed a place to park and didn't want to risk getting dinged by parking at the curb. He could always just write a nasty letter and stick it under the wiper after he's put away the groceries.

He unlocks the front door—with difficulty, because he refuses to put down any of his bags as he does it. Then he stumbles inside, kicking off his shoes in the entryway and tripping over them, just like he used to do when he was 12 and rushing to drop off his school bag so he could run right back out again to meet up with Bill and Stan and Richie. His shoes are nicer now, at least.

"Did you get any Twizzlers?"

He jumps, the bag holding his cherry tomatoes crashing to the floor, and the container pops open. Plump little tomatoes go rolling every which way.

Richie Tozier is sprawled over his mother's sofa, one gangly leg hooked over the back of it as he pokes at his phone.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Richie—"

"I skipped the road trip snacks on the way down, on account of it being 7am when I left the airport, but now I have a craving."

"No, I didn't get fucking Twizzlers, you fucking toddler." Eddie's heart is still racing from his jump scare, his blood pressure somewhere in the abnormally high range, but he carefully moves into the kitchen to set down his remaining grocery bags. He should clean up the tomatoes, throw out the ones that escaped the plastic carton. Instead, he stomps back into the living room. "How did you even get in here?"

Richie treats him to a crooked grin, finally looking up from his phone. "Your mom never fixed your bedroom window."

He looks _good_. Tired, and travel-rumpled, but achingly good. Something about the tilt of his mouth and the sparkle in his eye catapults Eddie straight back to high school, when Richie would wriggle up the tree at the side of the house and flop onto the little balcony off Eddie's room, then jiggle the perpetually-locked patio door until Eddie let him in. He never wanted anything in particular when he dropped by like that. Just attention. But really, when did Richie Tozier not want attention?

Looking at him makes Eddie feel soft and warm inside, so Eddie rolls his eyes and moves back into the kitchen. "What are you doing here, anyway? The service won't be for a few days."

"Maybe I just wanted to spend some quality time with my favourite Kaspbrak." Unsurprisingly, Richie has followed him into the kitchen and is leaning against the doorframe, watching as Eddie pulls out a box of garbage bags and cracks it open. "One last roll in the hay before we put her in the ground."

"She's fucking dead, asshole!"

"Hmm." Richie cocks his head thoughtfully. "No wonder she was so dry last night."

"That's fucking disgusting." Eddie snags a tomato off the ground and whips it at Richie. It pings off his shoulder. "You're a terrible person, I hope you get dick maggots, you piece of—"

"Dick maggots, Jesus!" Richie exclaims, cackling with delight. "At least Wall Street hasn't dampened your imagination, Eds."

"Don't call me that. Help me clear out the fridge, you dipshit."

If Richie wonders why they're emptying the fridge of a lot of perfectly edible food, he keeps it to himself. He helps Eddie shovel the contents into one very heavy garbage bag, and then Richie starts on the cupboards while Eddie puts away the groceries he picked up. They make small-talk about what Richie's up to out in LA, but only cover things Eddie already knows from their phone calls and texts. They chat a bit about the other Losers, and how it'll be nice to see them once they're in town for the funeral. Eddie asks, again, why Richie's in town so early, and receives another noncommittal response.

He last saw everyone for New Year’s at Ben's place in Nebraska. That had been their first post-Derry get together, since most of them had familial obligations over Christmas. Myra hadn't been thrilled about Eddie leaving the state again, had declined to go with him even though Patty and Audra were going to be there. She would rather just stay home and watch the ball drop on TV like they always did, wouldn't that be nice, Eddie?

He'd had a great time ringing in the New Year with his friends. He'd gotten loose and drunk and thought a little too seriously about kissing Richie at the stroke of midnight, and then laughed a little too hard when Richie shoved Stan out of the way and planted one on Patty instead. Sure, the circumstances were a little more somber this time around, but the Losers would make this bearable.

"So what's next on the to do list?" Richie asks as he sweeps three bags of different flavoured potato chips into his garbage bag. Eddie frowns, briefly wondering how Richie knows about his list, and then remembers that's just a figure of speech.

He hesitates long enough that Richie turns to look at him, blue eyes wide behind his glasses. They were more stylish than you'd expect from him, since Bev picked them out. He'd had to get new ones after Derry, since the old ones had cracks filled with Eddie's blood.

"Can you help me get the recliner out of here?"

For a long moment, Richie's quiet, his eyes flickering over Eddie's face. Eddie looks away, closes the fridge door, and catches Richie's nod in his periphery. "Sure thing. You want it in the truck? I can take it to Goodwill."

Eddie feels his mouth tighten; he hadn't considered donating any of Sonia's things. The option hadn't even occurred to him. He'd been planning just to throw everything out, cart the furniture out to the dump, because who the fuck would want any of Sonia Kaspbrak's tacky knickknacks? They were all tainted by her ownership, like Eddie himself.

Like he had been. Maybe still was, a little. But he was working on it.

He should donate her things. Most of them, anyway. The idea of someone less fortunate getting joy out of something Sonia owned would have made her lip curl with disgust. _Stick it to your mom while being an upstanding citizen!_ the Richie in his head said, and Eddie felt himself smile faintly.

"Not the chair," he says finally. "Take that to the dump."

Richie does, and while he's gone Eddie empties all the drawers in the living and dining rooms and starts sorting the contents into Keep/Donate/Trash. The trash and donate piles are almost the same size, Eddie trying to balance what someone might get some use out of against what's too useless to inflict on the staff of a charity. The keep pile is remarkably small—one picture of Eddie as a toddler, the Christmas after his dad died, with a shiny red bow on his head, and some credit card bills, old pay stubs, paperwork that might come in handy when he's trying to sort out her accounts. Everything else he finds is the sort of nonsense that seems to accumulate in drawers of its own volition over three decades of living in the same space. None of it matters.

Richie comes back with coffee and settles in beside Eddie at the dining room table, cooing over the photo ( _"Baby Eds! Cute, cute, cute! You'd think you'd have grown some, though."_ ) until he takes it upon himself to cook Eddie lunch. Eddie's dubious about Richie's ability to produce anything edible, but he concocts some grilled tuna sandwiches that aren't half bad. They eat at the kitchen table, like they did a hundred times when they were kids and Richie had wormed his way into the house, all flailing elbows under Sonia's disapproving lip purse. They would munch on carrots and dip, their knees knocking under the table as Richie tried to goad Eddie into a thumb war to the soundtrack of _Days of Our Lives_ filtering in from the living room. This meal and its accompanying chatter are fairly relaxing in their similarity until Richie asks, subtly pointed, if there's anything particular they need to take care of that afternoon.

And there is. He needs to go to the funeral home.

It feels a little more manageable with Richie there.

They order a dumpster to be delivered that afternoon and dropped in the driveway while they're gone, then load up the back of Richie's rental pickup—indisputably a better idea than the sedan Eddie had rented, what was he thinking, stupid—with miscellaneous donation crap from the living room, which they drop off at Goodwill on the way to the funeral home.

There's only one funeral home in Derry. It sits just on the outskirts of downtown, on a double-sized lot with lots of greenery and a fancy black and gold sign out front. There's a u-shaped driveway and a sizable parking lot, but they're the only vehicle there when they park. Eddie feels awkward, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up like he's being watched as he hurries to keep up with Richie's loping strides toward the entry.

He expects the air inside to be stuffy, but it's not. There's a pleasantly crisp scent in the air that zings through him like a shot of espresso. That sensation is dwarfed by the electric zap of Richie's hand brushing against his when they sway too close together.

Eddie stuffs his hand into his coat pocket, vaguely hoping it's not too obvious. He doesn't need to deal with his pathetic mooning after Richie on top of everything else right now. He hasn't even managed to broach the topic of divorce with Myra yet. He's not going to have stupid teenage butterfly feelings over a middle-aged comedian in a funeral home.

By some small act of God, Richie takes his awkwardness as grief-related and steps forward to shake hands with the bespectacled man in the Jeeves get-up who appears from behind a heavy velvet curtain. He introduces himself and Eddie, and gives a quick rundown of why they're here. Jeeves, real name Scott Hughson, of Hughson Funeral Home, nods his understanding and shakes Eddie's hand as well. He's almost the same height as Richie, but has salt-and-pepper hair, thin wire-framed glasses, and an open, sympathetic face. Eddie likes him instinctively, and is irritated about it.

"It's nice to meet you, Mr. Kaspbrak. I'm sorry it's under such somber circumstances," he says. "Can I get either of you something to drink before we get started?"

Eddie declines, but Richie takes a bottle of water, and then they move into an office where Scott slides behind a polished oak desk. Scott goes on to explain that, as Derry isn't big enough to have a morgue of its own, Sonia is currently being held in the funeral home itself. Eddie expected this, but it still makes his skin crawl, thinking of his mother lying dead on a metal slab only a floor below them. He'd never wanted to get this close to her again, and now it's unavoidable.

"Now, because your mother died at home and the cause isn't readily apparent—"

"I'm sorry, hold on," Eddie blurts, holding up a hand. "The officer who contacted me said she died of complications from Alzheimer's."

Scott's mouth tightens in consideration. "I'm not a medical examiner, but from what I understand, for that to be the case, her Alzheimer's would have been so far progressed that she wouldn't have been able to live alone. It's possible, but it is standard practice in cases like this for an autopsy to be performed before the deceased is interred. They need a specific cause of death for the death certificate to be issued."

Eddie inhales slowly, and he feels a squeeze on his knee. When he looks down, Richie's broad hand is splayed over him, fingers gripping tightly over his jeans. He hadn't been aware he'd been aggressively bouncing his knee, but the fidget quiets under Richie's palm.

"Is this going to hold things up?" he asks finally.

"No." Scott shakes his head and his hand moves to hover over a glossy booklet near the corner of his desk. "It shouldn't take more than a day, and the whole process of preparing for the service typically takes three to five days. Have you thought about what your mother would have wanted?"

 _I don't give a fuck what she would have wanted,_ is what he wants to say. Instead, he starts bouncing the leg Richie can't reach and says, "I want her cremated. No visitation. Funeral as soon as possible, I want to get this over with."

Scott tries to push a little for visitation, but Eddie's firm on it, and Richie passes him his unopened bottle of water when he feels Eddie's tension ratcheting up too high. He takes a long, slow sip from it while Scott pulls out a sample obituary and slides it across the desk toward him. As he screws the lid back onto the bottle, Eddie leans forward and lets his eyes slide over the dark print Times New Roman. It looks like any old obituary you'd flip to in the back of the Sunday paper, if anybody actually got newspapers anymore. _Loving mother, devoted friend._

It's all wrong.

"You got a pen?" Eddie asks. Reluctantly, Scott offers him a black ballpoint and a lined pad of paper. On it, he scribbles in thin smallcaps: _KASPBRAK, Sonia Jane. In her home on 15 February 2017, during her 73rd year. Predeceased by husband Franklin Kaspbrak (1978). Survived by son Edward. Service to be held on X date, time, at St. John's Catholic Church._

He hesitates for several long moments over the word _survived_. He doesn't feel much like he survived Sonia, but he supposes he did. As much as he did the clown, anyway, if not more.

Then, just to be petty, he adds, _Donations in Sonia's memory can be made to EqualityMaine,_ and pushes the pad back across to Scott.

"That's all I want," he says, tone flat. Scott looks it over, remaining carefully still and free of judgement. To his right, Eddie can feel Richie vibrating with barely suppressed amusement, having been reading over Eddie's shoulder while he wrote. "Do I have to contact the church to set up the service, or do you handle that?"

"I can take care of it." Scott nods, laying his own pen aside and folding his hands carefully. "Would you like there to be a gathering after the service?"

"I guess. I..." He glances over at Richie. He doesn't want to have to sit through the glad-handing of Sonia's romance book club or whatever, but in his head he hears Bev call him tacky at the thought of forgoing the wake. "If people are going to sit through a funeral, we should probably feed them afterward."

Scott smiles faintly and gives another nod. "Of course. The lower floor of the church has a suitable space available, and the volunteers there would be happy to provide refreshments as part of the rental fee." He makes a note on what Eddie assumes is a rough invoice. "Would you like to take a look at our collection of urns? We also have some burial-ready options, in case you plan to inter her ashes with your father."

This is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make. Sonia had never remarried after the death of her one and only husband. It was the sort of _I'll never move on_ romanticism that nostalgic people went nuts for. Of course she'd want to be buried with her husband.

Eddie has no idea where his father is buried.

"No." It comes out more sharply than he'd intended, and he flinches. "Uh, I mean, isn't there a place in the church cemetery where we can put her ashes?" His hand starts waving of its own volition, like that will make his thoughts come out more clearly. "One of those fancy walls with the safety deposit boxes for ashes?"

Scott's mouth twitches like he's trying not to smile, and Eddie's brow scrunches up with irritation. He can feel Richie smiling next to him. He huffs.

"They're called columbariums," Scott says. "As long as your mother was a member of the church, I'm sure they'd be happy to rent you a slot in theirs. Just one last thing for now—do you have someone in mind to run the service, or would you like me to handle that as well? I'm happy to, it would just require me getting some details about Sonia's life so I can make it more personal."

"Please." Eddie had been dreading this part. The concept of someone standing at a podium and spewing nice things about his mother for twenty minutes while he swallowed behind the too-tight knot of his tie. Having to look somber, not disdainful, like he believed Sonia Kaspbrak was worthy of more than a fleeting thought, let alone an entire service.

But she was still his _mother._ Maybe she didn't deserve this level of reverence, but if he'd learned anything over the course of his forty-one years, it was that people rarely got what they deserved.

Scott looks carefully between Eddie and Richie, then his eyes flicker to the obituary Eddie scribbled. He's a perceptive person; he'd have to be in this line of business. Families are complicated, and death only makes it worse. Eddie can see him connecting dots, drawing conclusions, and deciding how to phrase his next question. "Is there anyone you think would like to speak about your mother at the service? Say a few words?"

Eddie shakes his head once, decisive.

"No." He hesitates then, mouth tightening in consideration. He doesn't want to say too much, but he's sure Scott's inferred most of the situation already. "I was her only family, and we hadn't... We weren't in contact."

"I understand," Scott says, even and tactful. "I'll take care of everything and be in touch for final approval. If you could just jot down your contact info here, we can discuss payment options."

As Scott walks them to the door, Richie hovers close, like he thinks Eddie's going to keel over from the strain of it all. While this whole experience, which took maybe forty-five minutes, _has_ wiped him out, he's not a Victorian era maiden with the vapours. He doesn't need a fainting chair. "I'm fine, Rich," he insists under his breath.

He turns at the door to shake Scott's hand again, and Scott gives them a soft smile. "If there's anything I can help with over the next few days, feel free to let me know," he says to Eddie, and then adds, with a nod in Richie's direction, "you _and_ your husband."

Eddie's whole body goes stiff. He hadn't thought—but Richie came with him, to a _funeral home_. He was wearing a wedding ring. He was estranged from his mother. The donations. Of course. _Of course_ that's what Scott thought. "Oh, we're not—"

"Come on, babe," Richie says, sliding a large, possessive arm around Eddie's waist. "Let's get back to the house." Then he tucks Eddie up against him like it's something they do all the time, like it doesn't bring him close enough to smell the leather of his coat and soft pine of his shampoo. Eddie wants to sink into it like a puppy in a leaf pile on a warm autumn day.

He only allows himself one slow inhale before he shoves Richie away with an elbow to the gut. "Get off me, dipshit. What the hell was that?"

"I guess we just make a cute couple, Eds!" he chirps, grinning even as he idly rubs at his side where Eddie had nailed him. He blows a noisy kiss that makes Eddie's whole being scrunch up with indignation. And embarrassment.

The whole concept of them being together is just a huge joke to Richie, and it stings, even though he knows he shouldn't take it personally. Richie's out to the Losers, sure, but he's not _out_ out, and Eddie's never suggested he might be anything other than straight, and he's _married,_ but would it kill Richie to pine? Just a little?

He deflects: "It's going to be really fucking awkward now when Myra gets here, I hope you know that."

Richie cackles as they climb into his truck, but he falls silent as they pull onto the road, the drum beat of a classic rock song low on the radio. It's a song Eddie knows but can't remember. Boston, maybe.

They listen in silence until they pull onto their street, when Richie says, apropos of nothing, "I could do it, if you wanted."

Eddie awaits an explanation for three long beats before he prompts, "Do what?"

"Say something." Richie flaps his arm through the air, wishy washy. "At the funeral." As this sinks in, Eddie is quiet, considering. Richie must take his silence as incredulity, because he barrels on. "I could come up with something. Something vaguely nice and noncommittal, not lies, but not the truth, either. Obviously. It wouldn't be the eulogy of the century or anything, but if you want it, if it would make you happy... I would do it."

He dies off then, accepting Eddie's silence as he turns the truck into the driveway and pulls up to the dumpster that was delivered while they were gone.

He puts the car in park and turns the key, and then the radio's gone along with the hum of the engine, the quiet only broken by the periodic clicking of the catalytic converter as it cools. Richie unbuckles his seatbelt, but doesn't move to get out of the cab. Neither does Eddie.

"I'm so mad at her, Richie," he says finally. It's not a whisper, but it comes out soft and feels tight. He stares straight forward through the windshield, the logo of the waste disposal company blurring in front of his eyes. "It's been twenty-five years and I'm still so mad. Even when I'm not thinking about her, it's there, bubbling inside me like, like—hot poison or something, I dunno, but I can _feel_ it, and it _burns_. I want it _gone._ I want it _out._ " He draws in a deep, shuddering breath, and his hands clench against his thighs. "You know she never told me where my dad was buried? Like, I have no idea. Not the faintest fucking clue. I don't even know what state he's in. She moved here after he died, right? But where from? If I'd _wanted_ to bury her with him, I couldn't. What kind of fucking parent does that, Rich? What other shit didn't she tell me? There could be a million things that I don't know that I don't know, just because no one told me I was supposed to. And now I have to go digging through her life to tie up all these loose ends, but how am I supposed to do that if I don't _know_ anything? What happens if—"

"Eds." Richie's quiet when he interrupts, but Eddie's jaw snaps shut anyway, and when he looks over, Richie's staring at him with wide open blue eyes. He looks... he looks _devastated._

He reaches over to depress the button on Eddie's seatbelt, and when it unbuckles he pulls Eddie across the bench seat and gathers him into his arms. Eddie is enveloped in him, face pressing into Richie's neck. His eyes sting, he pushes deeper into Richie, fingers clutching hard at leather-clad shoulders. His lips taste salty, and he can't tell if it's from Richie's skin or if he's just crying.

"She never deserved you, Eds. And you didn't deserve her." Richie's hand comes up to cup the back of his neck, thumb dragging along the nubs of his spine in a way that's more soothing than it should be. "You can be as mad as you want, for as long as you want, man. And when you're not mad anymore..." Richie takes a deep breath; Eddie feels his chest expand and contract with it. "When you're not mad anymore, I'll be mad for you. For as long as you need."

He hadn’t asked Richie to come, but he’s here anyway, holding him tightly in the front seat of a pickup. The others weren’t here, wouldn’t come until Eddie called them, but Richie had never been one to wait for an invitation. He was obnoxious and moody, but he would never let a friend grieve alone, even if they wanted to. No wonder Eddie loved him.

”You okay?” Richie asks softly. There’s a soft brush against his hair that might be a pair of lips.

“No,” Eddie answers. “But I will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title is from "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye.
> 
> Here is an [owl sitting crisscross apple sauce](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eyebleach/comments/f4hobx/this_owl_sitting_criss_cross_applesauce/).
> 
> Thanks so much to [Katie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestbreak/pseuds/tempestbreak), [Chrissy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop/pseuds/falsettodrop) and [Jenni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeilig) for helping me get my head on straight figuring out the ins and outs of this nonsense, and to the Big Dick Eddie Rights gc for, like, everything.
> 
> Hit me up on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/omniocularz) or [Tumblr](https://icanseeyourtoner.tumblr.com/) if you want to scream about stuff!


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